“Yes, sir,” Joe answered.
It was finally settled that way, and while the party went into the hotel to get their rooms, Joe, the guides and Mills unpacked the horses and stabled them, took the dunnage bags of the party to the hotel, and all but Joe found their quarters in the annex. Joe picked out blankets for two, an axe, some grub and a few cooking utensils, and as soon as Bob came back, the two boys carted them back a few hundred yards into the deep woods, in a wild spot well off the trail, made themselves a fire pit against a big stone, which was so covered with green moss they first thought it was a stump, spread Joe’s poncho for a bed, on a raked up and smoothed heap of the dead needles, and then went back to have a look at the lake before supper.
It was still early, and the girls were out on the pier in front. Bob spied a canoe for hire, and promptly engaged it. They all four got in, with Joe as bow paddle and Bob as stern, and paddled straight out into the lake, which was quiet now as the wind died down with the setting sun. As they drew away from the shore, they began to realize what a big lake it is—ten or twelve miles long, with great, dark cedar and evergreen forests coming right down to the water’s edge, and by the time they were near the middle, they saw how above these forests here at the upper end rose peak after snow-covered peak, piling up to the Great Divide.
“It looks like a lake in Switzerland, doesn’t it?” said Alice.
Joe, of course, had never been to Switzerland, so he looked all the harder.
“Only I like it better,” Lucy answered, “because here, except for the hotel and those few cottages near it, you don’t see anything but forest and wilderness. It’s so wild and lonely! Oh, dear, I’d like to live here!”
“I’d like to sail an ice boat here in winter!” said Bob.
“And I’d like to fish here now,” said Joe, as a fish jumped half out of the water just ahead of the canoe.
“Fish! Hooray! Say, Joe,” Bob called, “if I get a fish early to-morrow, will you cook him for breakfast?”
“You bet!”